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Bestselling Memoirist Selected as Keynoter for Top Writers Conference

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Jeannette Walls, author of the bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle, will be the keynote speaker at the annual American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Writers Conference. The conference takes place April 21-22, 2007, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

Walls, presenting "The Truth Will Set You Free," has been a reporter for New York, Esquire, USA Today and MSNBC.com, where she currently works. She is a graduate of Columbia University's Barnard College.

The Glass Castle tells the story of the author's bizarre childhood growing up in the desert southwest, where she sometimes slept in cardboard boxes, and in a coal mining town in West Virginia, where she lived in a house without an indoor bathroom. She left for New York when she was 17, only to have her parents follow her. They eventually became homeless. The award-winning book has been a New York Times bestseller for more than six months. Paramount optioned the movie rights.

Walls will be the luncheon speaker on Saturday, April 21, 2007.

The 36th ASJA Writers Conference offers nearly 40 workshops for beginning, intermediate and advanced level writers. Panel presentations featuring national magazine and book editors and many of the country's top magazine journalists and authors are designed to help writers sell more of their work.

ASJA, the nation's leading organization of non-fiction freelance writers, was founded in 1948. Its nearly 1,300 members have met the organization's exacting standards of professional achievement.

For more information about the annual Writers Conference, visit www.ASJAConference.org and sign-up to receive regular conference updates via e-mail.

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